And so we’re up to date. Legal reps for the famous file-sharer have requested another appeal, and this time they want a hearing ‘en banc’, which means all the appeals court’s judges would hear the case, rather than the usual panel of three. Constitutional matters remain Nesson’s focus, even though Judge Nancy Gertner’s use of constitutional rights to revise the level of damages Tenenbaum should pay was previously rejected by appeals judges.

This time Nesson will argue that his client’s first trial was unconstitutional because the judge instructed the jury that they could award damages as high as $4,500,000 (the limit set by US copyright law for the number of copyrights infringed in this case), but then later admitted herself such high damages were unconstitutional. Therefore, Nesson’s argument goes, the judge incorrectly advised the jury and rendered the ruling counter to the US constitution. Or something like that.

According to TorrentFreak Nesson’s legal papers, filed with the court last week, say: “It is unconstitutional to instruct a jury that it can return an unconstitutionally excessive award. To instruct the jury that it may ascribe an award in a range of up to $4,500,000 against a non-commercial copyright infringer is punitive, excessive, not authorised by statute, and a denial of due process”.

The petition continues: “The defendant has challenged as unconstitutional the use of federal law and process to threaten catastrophic fines against the generation of kids who were downloading and sharing music peer-to-peer. The massive campaign of lawsuits initiated by the recording industry against people who copied music for personal use and never sold or considered selling it in any commercial way was entirely unprecedented”.

It remains to be seen if the appeals court will grant Tenenbaum another appeal hearing en banc, and if so what the outcome of such a hearing would be, slashed damages, a new trial or, presumably Nesson still hopes, an overturning of the judgement against his client?

Tennessee has passed a new state law which makes it illegal to share your passwords for content services like Napster or Rhapsody with other people.

While there are technical solutions that can ensure that only one person accesses an online content service via any one account at any one time, technology can’t stop people sharing user accounts if they tap into the shared service at different times. The aim of Senate Bill 1659 is to discourage people from letting their friends stream music from Napster or watch a movie via Netflix using their account logins, by making such activity not only against the terms of said services, but also a criminal offence.

The new law was well supported in the Tennessee legislator, very possibly because of some nifty lobbying on the part of the Nashville music business which is, of course, within that state.

The Recording Industry Association Of America, which would probably like to see a similar law introduced at a federal level, told reporters: “As the music industry continues its transition from selling CDs to providing fans convenient access to a breadth of legal music online, laws that provide effective enforcement against new and developing forms of content theft are essential to the health of our business”.

Of course, policing the new law will be challenging – how do you know passwords have been shared, what’s to stop an accused password sharer of claiming their account must have been hacked, and surely the law couldn’t realistically target co-habitees who share their content services with their housemates. Though it’s possible the record industry really wants the new law so to target message boards and suchlike which offer up passwords to different websites and content services.

A California-based online storage company called Box.net has received a subpoena from the Recording Industry Association Of America which is trying to identify a small group of people who, the trade body claims, are using the file-storage-and-transfer platform to share large amounts of unlicensed music.

According to reports, Box.net has complied with the court order. It remains to be seen what the RIAA now plans to do with that information, though presumably it is considering taking legal action against the individuals sharing music files without a licence via Box.net’s technology.

Whether the labels would consider any action against Box.net itself remains to be seen. Although the service can be used to store and share music files, it is not specifically marketed for that use, unlike the digital lockers recently launched by Amazon and Google, and therefore even the labels are unlikely to suggest the company should be seeking content licences.

However, the labels may say that Box.net should be doing more to stop its service from being used for copyright infringement, and any failure to do so would constitute contributory infringement on the tech firm’s part – an argument already used against European file-distribution network RapidShare.

Though with US copyright law providing more protection for tech companies than in Europe, and them having complied with this subpoena seemingly with little argument, any legal case against Box.net itself would probably be weak.